Digital Television
On 14 September 2009 Chile announced its decision to adopt the Japanese standard ISDB-T with MPEG-4 for digital terrestrial television, joining Argentina and Peru. The analog switchoff is scheduled for 2019. (Chile had delayed its decision on which digital terrestrial television standard to adopt. In late October 2008, the President submitted a bill to Congress detailing the legal framework for DTTV broadcasting in the country, but without defining which standard would be used.)
TVN, Chile's state-owned channel, has made digital terrestrial television broadcast tests since 1999. Canal 13 has been doing so since 2007 in Santiago only, transmitting in three DTV formats (ATSC, DVB and ISDB). In Valparaiso, UCV TV was to start in June 2010 demonstrative ISDB-Tb broadcasting for the Valparaíso/Viña del Mar area, using an 800 watts transmitter.
HDTV-ready television sets are widely sold in Chile, and cable and satellite television companies transmit limited HD content to its subscribers (24 HD channels in VTR, the country's largest cable TV provider).
Read more about this topic: Television In Chile
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)